Wintermute: green briar getaway

how i spent most of the weekend

2006 is here. finished up 2005 nicely with a getaway to black mountain, nc near asheville with some good friends. four days of relaxing, cooking (well, mostly i did the eating) good food, playing some football, strumming the six string, and lots of trivia. i think sometimes mrs. wintermute and I (ok, mostly me) start to annoy our friends with our win-at-all-costs approach to games, so we tried to lay back a bit this weekend. anyway, an awesome weekend. having the beav's dog, tucker, added to the excitment.

totally lucked out with a sweet 3 bedroom, 3 fireplace log cabin. was considerably less rural than i imagined, but still felt like we were getting away.

a huge factor was that the six of us travel well together. i've done a bunch of these weekend trips. they are almost always a blast, and i can't really compare one group of friends with another (i.e., traveling with my best friends from freshman year of college is different from traveling with my cousins is different from traveling with post-college friends) . however, this weekend was definitely the smoothest trip i've ever taken, it terms of planning. usually, weekend plans usually go something like this:

3 months prior: i send out a couple of emails seeing if anyone is interested in a trip.
2 months prior: people finally get back to me. mostly, they say they might be interested and will get back to me later.
1 month prior: i berate my friends for not getting back to me. at this point, many of the good deals are gone. a handful get back to me saying they are in. i reserve the place and tell folks to pay up the deposit.
3 weeks prior: at least one friend bails when it comes time to pay up.
2 weeks prior: i email the group to solicit ideas for stuff to do. i also remind them that their $ is overdue.
10 days prior: getting no response, I send a list of things to do. I also include a to-bring list where people can sign up for what they want to bring (e.g., beer, dvds, burgers).
5 days prior: getting no response, I send a list of what i've decided people should bring, trying to balance everyone's burden.
3 days prior: someone else asks if it's too late to bail out, saying he put off making travel arrangements and now it's really expensive to get there.
2 days prior: i email the group with directions, payment info, and caravan plans, and remind them to make sure they know what they're bringing. it's well organized into PDFs or spreadsheets and sent as attached files.
1 day prior: everyone emails me asking for directions and if i've thought of what we can do or what they bring. i send a hateful, jaded email asking everyone if they ignore attachments on purpose or haven't figured out how to download them yet.
3 weeks after the trip: i email the group pleading with them to pay me for everything that i put on my credit card to reserve the weekend.

in contrast, this trip was awesome. everyone got back to me right away. everyone paid AHEAD OF TIME. everyone read my email attachments and replied to them. most importantly, everyone brought what they were supposed to bring. it was such a relaxing weekend. we actually did what we wanted to do. i wish all my trips were like it.

we also visited the biltmore estate. i knew it was a big house, but it still really blew me away. it was george (grandson on cornelius) vanderbilt's bachelor pad. he was a 27-year old swinger when he commissioned it. i'm guessing a 110,00 acre castle with 43 bathrooms and indoor pool complete with underwater lights (at a time when most americans had neither indoor bathrooms nor electricity) helped him chase wool.

click here for biltmore pics.

click here for other weekend pics.

click here for tucker's perspective.

some highlights: